


Five Things Sam Tyler Regrets

by Nepthys



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-06-13
Updated: 2008-06-13
Packaged: 2017-10-06 00:01:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nepthys/pseuds/Nepthys





	Five Things Sam Tyler Regrets

1.  
   
He regrets that sun-dappled afternoon in the woods. He used to wonder if there was something different he could have done, something that would have brought his dad back to his mum and his four year-old self.   
   
At first he thought that was the whole point of him being here: to put things right. But that's not reality, that's just a stupid idea from a TV show. And what once looked right is now murky with ambiguity, black and white blurring into shades of grey.   
   
He's starting to realise that things are not always what they seem.  
   
And that some things can't be changed.  
   
And that sometimes its better that way.  
   
   
2.  
   
He wishes he could speak to his mother again, just once more.   
   
The last time he'd seen her they had talked around things, leaving so much unsaid; steering away from difficult words and charting an elliptical path around his pain.   
   
And he realises now that he was so caught up in his own sadness that he didn't see hers. He hadn't explained, had just trusted in her maternal inclination to always believe the best of him. To forgive him. Her Sammy.   
   
He doesn't regret jumping, but he regrets not saying goodbye to his mum.  
   
   
   
3.  
   
He feels bad about what happened with Annie. She had been such a good friend to him and had believed in him when no-one else did.   
   
She deserved better.   
   
And when she had looked at him with such hurt in her eyes, and told him he'd deceived her, led her on, he really couldn't argue. He deserved that slap. He suspects he deserved much worse because although he always liked her part of him knew all along it wasn't in the way he should.   
   
He regrets that. Regrets letting his loneliness get the better of him; letting her believe he was something he wasn't; letting himself believe it for a little while, too.  
   
   
4.  
   
He doesn't regret Gene's wife leaving him (he feels guilty about it sometimes but that's not the same thing at all).   
   
And it would have probably happened anyway, sooner or later; things hadn't been going well for a while and it was habit more than anything else holding the marriage together.  
   
But Sam does regret the _way_ it happened: her coming home to find her husband buried to the hilt in his D.I.   
   
And if there's a tiny part of him which occasionally wonders why they weren't more careful, and why they had taken to shagging at Gene's home in their dinner break while Vera was at her mother's….well, he's become adept at ignoring it.   
   
Because even though he knows it turned out to be for the best, Sam really does regret how it happened.  
 

 

5.  
   
Its been several months since this thing started. Started properly, that is, since Gene's divorce. They still have to be careful, of course, because its not like you can be a gay copper in 1975.   
   
And he's still getting used to it.   
   
He came to terms ages ago with fact that his idea of bliss is apparently a bluff, boorish bloke with a fondness for puns, sherbet dips, and fucking Sam through the mattress (though not in that order). He doesn't regret any of that.  
   
But he's still getting used to the idea that he really can _have_ this; they both can.  
   
He looks over at Gene's sleeping form and sees a pattern of shadows, grey on darker grey in the early morning half-light.   
   
And his only regret is that they didn't do this sooner.

 

   
END


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